Feral City

An exhilarating and intimate look at what happened when the pandemic emptied the city—and a rebellious energy reclaimed the streets

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Author, social critic and “New York City’s career elegist” (The New York Times), Jeremiah Moss felt alienated in a town that had become suburbanised and sanitised. Then lockdown launched an unprecedented urban experiment: What happens when an entire social class abandons the city? In the streets made vibrant by New Yorkers left behind, Moss found a sense of freedom he never thought possible. Participating in a historic explosion of protest, resistance and spontaneity. From queer BLM marches to exuberant outdoor dance parties, he discovers that, without “hyper-normal” people to constrain it, New York can be more creative, connected, humane and joyful. In this genre-bending work of “autotheory”, Moss gives an account of his renewed sense of place as a transgender man, braiding the narrative with psychoanalysis, literature and queer theory, as he offers valuable insight into the way public space—and the spaces inside us—are controlled and can be set free.